


One September in Montparnasse

by lollard



Category: Classical Music RPF, Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 14:38:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1095144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollard/pseuds/lollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It makes Aaron want to move, to drift across the broad, resonant space he can hear in Robert’s harmonics. It’s the kind of music one wants desperately to live in, and it’s that as much as anything else that makes Aaron tell Robert that if he finds himself in New York, Aaron will do whatever he can. </p><p>1928: Robert Frobisher, Paris, an affair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One September in Montparnasse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hikario](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hikario/gifts).



> The implied suicide in the tags is canonical, and is not discussed in detail.

_223 W. 78th St._  
 _New York_

_February 3, 1932_

_Dear Mr. Sixsmith,_

_First let me offer my deepest and most sincere condolences to you on the loss of your friend. Please do not blame yourself. I gather from your letter that you knew Robert for quite some time -- certainly much longer than I did -- yet in situations like this the reminder is frequently helpful: please do not blame yourself. Our brief acquaintance was enough to indicate to me that Robert was quite troubled in a way that no one person could help._

_He was so gifted -- your enclosed m.s. is proof of that. His loss is also a loss for all of us. When I knew him his work spoke of unfulfilled potential, and this “Cloud Atlas Sextet” shows what he became. I’m quite certain of that. He never wrote to me again, and I did not know where to write to him, but I always wondered. I always hoped. I’m flattered to have been included on his final list for the small print run, but I grieve the reason he turned the responsibility for publication and dissemination over to you._

_With your permission I will forward a copy of this m.s. to my publisher. I understand that the run you arranged was quite small -- perhaps the French or American rights have not yet been sold? My publisher here has a sister agency in France that could be of some assistance, and I have a few teachers currently in France and in Germany who will recognize Robert’s merits. I will do everything I can to ensure that this sextet reaches its intended and proper audience -- which is to say, the world. I am sorry his parents did not permit a memorial. You and I will have to do what we can._

_I will never forget him, never._

_Please stay in touch._

_Yours sincerely,  
Aaron Copland_

***

Yesterday, as he looked out the window after writing his weekly letter to his parents, Aaron saw a few fat clouds scudding, picturesque and graceful, across a perfect azure sky framed at the bottom by the rooftops of Montparnasse. He’d allowed himself a moment’s fancy to think about the clouds -- where they came from, where they might be going, how different they might look to someone across the river or even out in the country, where Nadia lives most of the time, now, teaching her current crop of students, of which Aaron is one no longer. How the clouds might change, or might not. Whether the clouds are different from the ones he and his sisters watched in Prospect Park (and, if he is being quite honest, that they still watched, when he was last at home and he and his sister Laurine and her children took a picnic lunch to the park). But yesterday, Aaron also noticed that the days were getting shorter. And today, the rain came in. The summer of 1928 is on its way out.

The evening is cold and wet, but that isn’t the only reason that Aaron hurries down Avenue Henri-Martin in his slightly shabby (but neatly brushed) coat. Aaron is late. Nadia, who teaches harmony and values harmony in all things, will forgive him -- but she will forgive him because she knows that he cannot abide lateness in others, certainly, but least of all in himself. _There are so many other reasons for others to think poorly of one,_ he’d said to Nadia once, _that if courtesy can’t smooth it over, at least they cannot hold discourtesy against you_. But he’d been so close, _so_ close, to really solving the harmony problem in his new variations for piano, that he couldn’t resist another five minutes, and then another five turned into ten, which turned into twenty, and he only just had time to throw on his jacket, straighten his tie, grab his hat and his folio, and run into the rain.

Aaron is leaving for New York at the end of the month, and he’d like to have the variations done by then. He loves Paris, loves Nadia’s Wednesday teas where they all gather to hear new work, loves being at the heart of all this modern music -- but the tug in his heart toward not just Brooklyn (and his family), but America, grows stronger the longer he stays away. Perhaps more to the point: the _modernity_ of the music is beginning to wear upon him. Everything he writes seems as chilly as the air around him, and while Aaron quite likes the stark quality of the new variations, there’s some restraint in it that tells him it’s time to shake up his routine.

He’d underestimated the time it would take him to walk to the salon of the Princesse de Polignac; Aaron hastens his steps even more -- and is not prepared for the young man standing outside the Polignac salon, just under the eaves, smoking a cigarette, head tilted back so Aaron can see the whiteness of his throat.

He steps under the eaves and looks at the young man and, without thinking, looks longer than he should -- slim, dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a generous lower lip and clever, taper-fingered hands. The young man catches him looking, and even as his lips curve into a knowing smile (a little insolent, Aaron thinks, maybe a little cruel), Aaron’s mouth presses quickly into a thin line before he lifts his chin and puts on an easy, affable smile. “The salon?” he asks.

The young man nods at the door. “The festivities have yet to commence,” he replies in English. “Mademoiselle Boulanger -- do you know her?”

“Quite well,” Aaron says, removing his hat. “The American school at Fontainebleu.”

“Ah, yes -- you must be Monsieur Copland.” There’s something almost hungry in the young man’s eyes. “She’s spoken of you in the highest terms, you know.”

Aaron feels almost alarmed by this: even though he’s found a little success in publishing, made a (very) little money, it’s still new, having a reputation that precedes him. It’s especially unsettling that this young man, with his upper-crust accent, knows him by it. “I strive to be a credit to her teaching,” he says, still smiling. “Are we to hear something of yours this evening?”

“That’s the plan,” the young man agrees, and finishes his cigarette; the butt goes in a hedge, and Aaron restrains a frown. “You probably want to get out of those wet things.”

Aaron tells himself that he is imagining anything approaching a leer in the young man’s voice, and keeps smiling, and steps into the Princesse’s foyer. Soon he is kissing Nadia, paying his respects to Madame de Polignac and her Violet, accepting a glass of cognac, and settling in next to Israel Citkowitz for the evening.

The young man performs third on the schedule. Aaron watches critically and listens more critically: the notes feel scattered, the tonic system never emerges into any real clarity, and yet he can see why the young man is here. There’s something that fascinates in the music, something that doesn’t quite slot into what the Princesse normally puts on (or that Nadia likes) but that makes room for itself, nevertheless. Aaron can’t put his finger on it. He’d have to hear it again, and perhaps once more after that.

When Robert Frobisher lifts those clever hands from the piano, he does not look at the Princesse de Polignac, nor Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger, but straight at Aaron Copland, with a very small smile -- somewhat friendlier than his last one. _See this?_ it seems to say.

Aaron sees.

 

***

Nadia tells him and Israel the basics after Frobisher’s gone, and as they walk back toward Montparnasse together. Frobisher’s a Cambridge man, his parents well-to-do, his father clergy. Studied under Trevor Mackerras at Caius College --

All that earns from Aaron is a raised eyebrow, but it’s enough to make Nadia laugh quietly and stop relating the Frobisher dossier. “No,” she tells Aaron. “They didn’t get on very well at all.”

“After what he played?” says Israel. “I’m surprised he made it out. Mackerras put up with that?”

“The soul of modern music,” Aaron says -- lightly, ruminative and gentle, to the drizzle.

“He’s young,” Nadia says. “He needs guidance.”

Aaron very carefully does not look at Nadia, but when she suggests that perhaps she might provide an address, if Aaron wanted to write young Monsieur Frobisher to inquire further about his work, he doesn’t ask any questions.

Nor, after they part ways at Rue Saint-Vincent, does Aaron feel his customary urge to turn around and look at Israö’s slim back and golden curls.

 

***

_5 September 1928_

_Dear R.F. -_

_Your work is intriguing, and I should like to see more of you._

Aaron pauses, then continues:

_Please join me Wednesday evening, if you are free. The piano will be newly tuned._

_Yours,  
A. Copland_

The letter goes out that morning with the rest of the post. Aaron rubs the bridge of his nose, and goes to stand by the window to look at the clouds -- there are more of them today -- and stretch, twisting his back, rolling his neck. He lets out a long breath. _It’s done_ , he thinks, and isn’t sure why he feels these nerves. It’s not as though this is unfamiliar territory. It’s not as though Nadia doesn’t know (and see, and perhaps have in mind). It’s not as though Frobisher would be the first young composer Aaron would take under his wing, whether the rest of it happens or not.

Aaron leans his head against the window frame, watching the sky.

 

***

Aaron is reviewing letters from home -- and a letter or two from publishers, with his royalty statements -- when Robert Frobisher saunters into his rooms that Wednesday, folio under his arm. Aaron has a little coffee ready, and he gestures toward the more comfortable seat by the window. “Today’s paper is available, if you’re interested, while I look,” he says, opening the folio to see the neat, precious hand-written pages within. The neatness of the pages shouldn’t surprise him, and yet -- perhaps the insolence? the casually-thrown cigarette? -- it does.

He glances up in time to see Frobisher, cup in hand, looking instead at the letters on Aaron’s little desk. One from Laurine is on the top. “Girlfriend?” he inquires.

“Sister,” Aaron says, careful not to let his expression change. It’s a favored tactic of children, testing boundaries like this, and Frobisher’s talented enough for Aaron to have the patience to set them and outlast the testing. “She’s been very supportive of my work. All my family has, really.”

If Frobisher’s dark eyes were windows, the shutters draw, fast. “That’s good of them,” is all Frobisher says.

 _Aha_ , Aaron thinks. Well-to-do, yes; Cambridge, yes -- but there’s a sore spot there, and best not to press it too hard, not yet. “It is,” he agrees. “Mademoiselle Boulanger told me you came to work with her after you left Cambridge -- working with Sir Trevor Mackerras?”

“Yes -- several of us left at once,” Frobisher says; there’s a breeze in his voice, a mystery unraveling slowly for Aaron the more Frobisher speaks. “Pater consented to a Continental sojourn to further my education for a year, after which point he expects great things or a lifetime of teaching lessons to dull young ladies, one or the other.”

Aaron is surprised by his own genuine smile -- but it’s a feeling he knows, isn’t it? He’s published, he’s getting a good reputation, Nadia is doing everything she can to help (and vice versa), but he himself is only one teaching job away from complete dependence on his family. It’s not something a composer can forget, ever. And while Frobisher might be rough around the edges, it’s the affected roughness of the wealthy and rebellious. Aaron’s seen it before. Kindness often helps. And Aaron is a good composer, he knows he’s good -- but goodness does not come before kindness.

He sifts through the manuscripts, tugs out a few pages, and holds them out. “Why don’t we see how close you are to great things?”

Frobisher’s eyes glitter, and he sits at the piano, coffee going carefully by its right leg.

 

***

Frobisher -- Robert -- will not make it to greatness in a year. That much is apparent to Aaron. It’s also apparent to Robert, he thinks, which would explain much of the bitterness masked by insolence, as well as some of his more frenetic behavior elsewhere.

“There’s no rush,” he tells Robert late one night, about a week later, his hands stilling Robert’s wrists. “Slow, slow -- we have time.”

Robert shakes his head violently, fine dark hair brushing like silk against Aaron’s throat, and it’s another moment or two before he feels Robert’s breath rush out in a great sigh, before Robert does as he asks.

 _If all you have is a year to become great_ , Aaron thinks the next morning, _perhaps everything is a rush._

And so Aaron makes a choice. He chooses to live by Robert’s pace. And why not? He’ll board a train for Calais in a few weeks, and he’ll sail to New York; he doesn’t expect to see Robert again for a long time; he felt before that night at the Princesse de Polignac’s salon as though he needed to break his routine; and if it will help a struggling young composer, so much the better.

Robert only returns to his rooms once or twice, and their days fall into a pattern. They rise late -- later than Aaron likes, but he made a choice. They go to a cafe for something substantial; when they return to Aaron’s rooms, Robert paces and composes, while Aaron corresponds, reads the paper. When Robert wants a break, he turns to Aaron, who does not turn him away. Robert plays him the day’s work, and they talk about it, debate about it, debate broader issues of aesthetics and other composers’ works. They eat supper. They return, and it is Aaron’s turn to work on his piano variations, while Robert watches, periodically making comments or asking sharp questions. And they retire late, sometimes two or three in the morning, always falling to sleep later than that. Aaron spends more than one afternoon watching the set of Robert’s shoulders while Robert sits at the piano in his undershirt. If Robert is used to indulgence, Aaron is not, and looking at a beautiful young man do work, _good_ work, is an indulgence.

 _I’m twenty-eight_ , Aaron thinks, amused, _heavens. Shouldn’t one experience a little indulgence before one turns thirty?_

 

***

Robert’s dark head shoots up from where he’s drawing what is undoubtedly a rude cartoon. Aaron likes Robert’s rude cartoons, though he’d never say so in as many words. “What’s that theme, there?”

“What?” Aaron looks over at him.

“That -- play that again, what you just played.” Robert clambers up from the chair by the window and comes to stand by the piano. Aaron plays back the last few measures. “It sounds out of place.”

“It’s something new,” Aaron says -- a little distracted. He plays the measures again. “Your Cecil Sharp -- you know him?” Robert gives a derisive snort; Aaron ignores him. “When I last went to see Sylvia, at Shakespeare and Company -- she showed me something he’d written, about English folk song. I thought I’d try something American -- you see -- “ Aaron taps the book on the far edge of the music rack: _Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads_.

“Ah yes,” Robert says, sonorous and supercilious, “the really great American music. Did you go see a Tom Mix picture while I slept?”

Aaron looks at his manuscript in progress, looks up at Robert -- and stretches, smiling. “My dear, how is it you propose to become the greatest British composer of his time if you reject the music that Britons themselves make?”

“How is it you propose to be a really modern composer when you study the greatest works of Tin Pan Alley?” Robert retorts.

“Lomax is a folklorist,” Aaron murmurs, focus drawn by the birthmark visible under the collar of Robert’s open shirt. “Not a songwriter. Or a composer.”

“Cecil Sharp is,” Robert says; he sounds angry. “Don’t you see -- that’s the point. All the British composers these days strive with each other to reach the greatest heights of sentimental mediocrity. As though nostalgic pablum was ever -- could ever -- save anyone from anything.”

Aaron sits back on the piano bench, brow furrowing. “Is it about being saved?”

Even as he speaks, he can see Robert withdraw into himself, his eyes shuttering again -- and when Robert says, “It’s about immortality,” his voice is cold. “It’s about making something that _no one_ may argue with, or about.”

“You’ve written criticism,” Aaron reminds him. “You know as well as I do -- the piece has never and will never be written that a critic will regard as completely flawless.”

Robert’s posture then shifts, suddenly; he leans against the piano, all casual insouciance like that first night outside the Polignac salon. “And that’s why there are no great American composers. For all your jingoism -- you aim too low.”

Aaron breathes out; he _will not_ let Robert goad him into an argument. Debate, yes. Argument, no. “What we can be,” he says carefully, “as a nation -- we can still mold that. We can shape the national character even as our music reflects our national character.”

“We can aim higher.” Robert sounds so sure. Aaron’s gaze flicks from his face to his collar and back again. “For whom do we write? What are we telling the world? What are we telling the future?”

Aaron rests his hands in his lap. “I’m telling all of us about America,” he says, keeping his voice quiet. “And what about you?”

He doesn’t expect Robert not to have an answer -- it seems only logical that he’d have an answer -- but Aaron sits there, silent, and watches Robert take one breath after another, watches his expression change from belligerence to something much closer to bewilderment, until he can’t take it any more.

He touches Robert’s hand. “Play me your quartet again,” he says. “Please?”

Robert doesn’t pull away. Aaron yields the piano.

 

***

The young man is a spendthrift. Aaron can tell that much. He also isn’t proud of glancing at Robert’s correspondence while Robert runs down the street for a loaf of bread… but Robert does it to him, so Aaron thinks it’s only fair, really. What he sees are letters to solicitors in England, and letters to his father. The hand looks angry to Aaron, but he doesn’t ask.

He does, however, try to convince Robert that they don’t need much more than bread, cheese, onion soup, perhaps beef once per week. He lets Robert rifle through his collection of published music and make copies. It didn’t take him long to figure out that Robert doesn’t respond well to lectures, and it’s not as though they’ve enough time together to make the case a worthwhile one. Aaron leaves for Calais in a week and a half. Robert knows that. There are causes worthy of taking up, and most of them have to do with Robert’s composition, not Robert’s nature.

And there are of course some things in Robert’s nature about which Aaron cannot complain. His lips, his hands, his urgency -- isn’t it nice, to be needed? Isn’t it nice to be kind?

One night when the window is open, a thin, chill breeze drifting in, a moon partially obscured by clouds visible from their bed, Robert says to the ceiling, “Aaron, do you like being a degenerate?”

Aaron tucks his hands behind his head, smile growing crooked in the darkness; he knows Robert can’t see it. “I think of myself as a moral person, Robert.”

“You don’t think what we do is a vice?” He can hear Robert’s head turn toward him.

“A very pleasurable one,” Aaron says -- and it’s true: he knows he won’t finish these piano variations before he sails for New York, a blame shared between both of them. “At least, for me. But I don’t think I’m a degenerate.”

It’s so long before Robert replies that Aaron thinks he might have gone to sleep. “My brother died in Flanders. Near Messines.” Aaron can hear the studiedly casual note in Robert’s voice. “He was older -- nine years.”

Only a little older than Aaron, then.

“I’d like to know if he was -- like me. There’s no way to know.”

Something tells Aaron that if he reaches out to touch Robert right now -- and he’d like to; it would be the kind thing -- Robert will flee his bed, his apartment. So instead Aaron murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

“They wonder why I’m not him,” Robert says -- as though Aaron never spoke. “Both of us Eton and Cambridge, me always the afterthought -- until the War. Do you know how difficult it is to measure up to a corpse? It never changes. I’d like more ammunition to use against him.”

Aaron is very still. _Like a trapped animal_ , he thinks, and he’s not sure whether he’s thinking of himself or of Robert. Perhaps both of them. He’d worked, during the war -- picked berries upstate, to replace the laborers gone to the AEF. But that isn’t the same. And it isn’t as though one can forget, never that… but what Robert is speaking of is something that Aaron cannot speak to, or play to. Aaron is not that man.

_I’d like more ammunition to use against him._

He thinks of the train to Calais, glad for the first time that the train will be waiting for him soon, at the end of the month. He can see it in his mind’s eye, a great mechanical steam-engine carrying him north -- close, he realizes suddenly, to the fields of Flanders.

The bed moves, beside him; Robert is gone, moving to the other room. Aaron realizes this too late. He sits up, and through the dim moonlight streaming in he sees Robert shrug into a dressing gown (Aaron’s dressing gown) and move to the piano in the other room. He recognizes the notes that snake into the air as a Telemann fugue, sharp, minor, broody, a fortress brooking no entry.

 _What could I have done?_ Aaron thinks. _What could I possibly do?_

He listens to Robert cycle through Telemann, Scarlatti, Purcell, Haydn, and drifts to sleep somewhere during Schubert’s Trout Quintet, dreaming the other four parts in as he goes.

 

***

Aaron wakes and Robert is gone -- not forever, he can tell. Robert’s music is still here; Robert wouldn’t leave without it.

So Aaron goes about his own neglected business that morning. He opens the window, sits at his desk (many clouds, this morning, and he thinks there will be rain later), and goes through the last few days of post. Letters from his sisters, his parents, his brother Ralph, and all of them say some variant on _this is the last letter we’ll send, we can’t wait to see you soon_. A letter from Israel Citkowitz -- which surprises him.

He rises before he reads it -- he needs more coffee. As he pours, Aaron’s eyebrows rise: apparently Israel feels injured that Aaron has locked himself away, meaning that as Israel is to leave France late the following evening, bound for New York, he will not be able to see Aaron before he goes. _I am really put out_ , Israel writes, _as I have made some substantial changes to the piece, and desired your opinion before I meet with the publisher the day after my return. What -- who -- could be so interesting that you leave your rooms so rarely?_

Aaron’s mouth tightens. _Someone who shares my vices_ , he allows himself to think, only a little bitterly, _someone else I can’t help_. He loads his coffee with more sugar than is his wont to take the taste from his mouth.

When Robert blows back in with a load of buns, Aaron is at the desk, writing a return letter to Israel. “Good morning,” he says mildly, without turning around.

“Always with the letters,” Robert sighs, leaning against the window frame again; in his peripheral vision he can see a half-consumed bun in Robert’s hand. “What’s so urgent?”

“It would be nice,” Aaron says, “if my friend Israel had a letter waiting for him by the time he arrives in New York. Time is of the essence.”

“You’ve a wide circle of correspondents.”

Of course Robert makes it sound like something to be disdained. “I’m fortunate in my friends,” he says, steadily, glancing up --

\-- but Robert is looking at the clouds. “Are you?” he says, and Aaron wonders if Robert really means half the things he says to come out so disdainfully. “I’ve got one. Physicist. He might be using me for my contacts -- he’s not the right kind of people.”

Neither is Aaron, technically; Aaron does not point this out.

Robert crams the last of the bun in his mouth, barely chews, swallows. “Least he’s pretty enough.” Cheerful. “And quite clever.”

 _Is this supposed to make me jealous?_ Aaron wonders.

“We don’t write often.”

“Maybe you should,” Aaron says, reflecting that he’s yet to have a conversation with Robert Frobisher that doesn’t feel like stepping through a field containing unexploded ordnance. “The work we do means an itinerant life. It helps keep you grounded, writing people.”

Another snort from Robert -- and Aaron feels, finally, a flash of temper: _can’t you see I’m trying to help you?_ But he keeps it out of his voice when he says, “It would help your work. What you’ve played me is really ethereal, almost to the point of floating away. There has to be at least a little tether. A little balance.”

Robert looks directly at Aaron then, and says, deliberate, “I’ve yet to find that connection. I don’t think it’s worth it.”

 _Enough_. Aaron puts down his pen. “What do you think we’re talking about, Robert? I’m talking about your music.”

“You weren’t thinking about inviting me to New York to continue our little arrangement?” Robert shifts up, stepping toward the desk. Aaron can smell sour wine: _so that’s what he was doing_. “So you could cadge an idea or two by day, and have me by night?”

“ _No_ ,” Aaron says, outraged. “That’s never -- “

“That’s _always_ ,” Robert corrects, pointing at him. “That’s always how it is, always how it works. Even with your precious Nadia. You can’t tell me you haven’t done it yourself -- though I don’t know how anyone was ever willing to do it to _you_ , looking like you do -- “

“Robert, stop -- “

“ -- and if your music’s not a cold, dead fish, it’s utterly mawkish -- “

“Robert -- “

“ -- and you’re a coward,” Robert finishes, dark eyes glassy, wild. “You don’t know what it is to be wholly untethered. You have no idea, none -- “

Aaron pushes himself up slowly from the writing desk and goes in the bedroom and closes the door. He can hear Robert stomping for the door. When it slams shut, Aaron slowly pokes his head out of the bedroom.

The room is quiet. The sack of buns is still on the windowsill.

Aaron lets out a long sigh.

He starts to gather Robert’s things. If he can organize them, put them in a pile -- that will be a start.

 

***

It’s nearly a week before he sees Robert again. The pile of shirts (laundered, folded), music (organized in its folio), and assorted miscellany has found a home in a basket next to the piano. Aaron has started his preparations to leave Paris, Aaron has visited Nadia, Sylvia, and his other friends and acquaintances, and most importantly, Aaron has made significant progress on his piano variations.

He has also started several letters which he will not send, about Brooklyn, the clouds in Prospect Park, his nieces and nephews singing at play, and what it means to be tethered.

The day’s post brings a brief note signed only _R.F._ , asking if he might drop by to retrieve his belongings. Aaron sends back a brief and courteous note indicating that the following afternoon would be convenient.

“I’m afraid I was an ass,” Robert says immediately upon his arrival. “Listen, I’m -- “

Aaron lifts a hand. “It’s fine.” He gives Robert a smile. It is not fine; admitting it will help neither of them, and it doesn’t matter. “Let’s just -- forget it. I have your things -- “ He turns for the basket on the table.

“I looked at Cecil Sharp’s work, and perhaps you’re right -- there’s something about it.” Robert’s moved to the piano, leaving Aaron standing there with the basket in his hands. “I tried something -- may I?” He gestures to the keyboard, and Aaron nods. It’s better than fighting about it, and it’s likely to be the last time he hears Robert play.

What Robert plays -- it’s like and unlike what he performed at the Polignac salon. That strange, shimmering quality is there, but something runs under it, a hard, jazzy syncopation that makes him think simultaneously of the rhythms of threshers in fields and of the bootheels of country dancers striking the floor. It makes Aaron want to move, to drift across the broad, resonant space he can hear in Robert’s harmonics. It’s the kind of music one wants desperately to live in, and it’s that as much as anything else that makes Aaron tell Robert that if he finds himself in New York, Aaron will do whatever he can.

“Write me,” he urges, pressing the basket into Robert’s hands, kissing both his cheeks in the Continental style. “Please. You’re too good to let go.”

Robert gives him that same rakish, insolent smile -- but Aaron thinks he’s pleased. “Talking about the music again, I assume?”

“Of course.” Aaron raises his eyebrows. “Isn’t that the only thing?”

Robert Frobisher half-bows, with a flourish of his hand -- making Aaron laugh -- before disappearing down the stairs.

Aaron keeps packing. Calais first. Then the clouds of Prospect Park.

**Author's Note:**

> In his youth, Aaron Copland was both deeply invested in modern music and acquainted with many of the Lost Generation. I've played fast and loose with timelines for the sake of keeping two things the same: that Copland knew, was quite fond of, and did his best to help many talented young composers, and that Copland was a kind and somewhat shy man with a large and loving circle of friends. (For more, see his correspondence (Yale University Press, 2006) and the Howard Pollack biography of Copland -- those are my two primary sources.) Both Copland and Frobisher are on the cusp of new and different things here, moving together and apart in a scary, difficult, rapidly changing world. 
> 
> Deep and profound thanks to Rymenhild and r_lee, betas extraordinaire. All errors and inelegances that remain are mine and mine alone.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Hikario -- I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
